The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire

Abstract

In the first two centuries AD, the eastern Roman provinces experienced a proliferation of elite public generosity unmatched in their previous or later history. In this study, Arjan Zuiderhoek attempts to answer the question why this should have been so. Focusing on Roman Asia Minor, he argues that the surge in elite public giving was not caused by the weak economic and financial position of the provincial cities, as has often been maintained, but by social and political developments and tensions within the Greek cities created by their integration into the Roman imperial system. As disparities of wealth and power within imperial polis society continued to widen, the exchange of gifts for honours between elite and non-elite citizens proved an excellent political mechanism for deflecting social tensions away from open conflicts towards communal celebrations of shared citizenship and the legitimation of power in the cities.

Local Festivals

“…Benefactors spent on athletic training facilities; they built or decorated the gymnasia, paid for the expenses of running the baths, they paid for teachers and instructors, and provided the oil with which athletes rubbed their bodies. But most importantly, benefactors organized or subsidized the contests in which the athletes competed: they provided the funds, set up the prize money, and hired other performers (the classic study is Veyne 1976; see also Zuiderhoek 2009).…”

Paul's Place in a First-Century Revival of the Discourse of “Equality”

“…82 We may posit that at the bottom of the conflicts between the assembly (δῆμος) and the council (βουλή), so frequently attested for the cities of the early Empire, lay an attempt by ordinary citizens to retain or regain some measure of control over the affairs of their communities. 83 When oligarchic excesses and abuses of power could no longer be tolerated, social tensions erupted in violence. For example, at Aspendus in Pamphylia, a riot was provoked by an artificially induced food shortage, as related in the Life of Apollonius: "the rich men had shut up all the grain and were holding it for export from the country."…”

On complementarity of practice, scale and structure. Scalar aspects of social/material space in Anatolian peri-urban contexts in antiquity

“…All of these changes represent incremental adjustments in the behaviours of everyday (and elite) people, some of them encouraged by outside forces, such as the Roman practice of cultivating the landed elite, in an effort to stabilize their administrative base (Gleason 2006, 234; Ratté 2002, 19). Another force may also have operated: extending Zuiderheok's (2009, 53–60) neo-Ricardian (and almost Pikettian (Piketty 2014)) analysis offered for the later imperial period to this earlier stretch of time, simple population growth means that land becomes scarcer relative to labour. Rents thus should increase with more surplus accruing to those owning the land, with a subsequent concentration of wealth.…”